I've just discovered that Nilesat has been ordered to take down Gaddafi's Libya State channels.
Good. This will greatly weaken the hold that Gaddafi has over Libya.
Libyans have been calling for this ever since the uprising began. HMG has been sympathetic to the call, but nothing has been done. In the end it was a private action in Egyptian courts that suceeded.
Which all goes to show that Governments are ready to go to war, but not willing to take effective non-violent action to bring dictators down.
The whole point of the Global Index of Human Rights is to prevent violence by using non-violent pressure on dictators. I proposed this refinement of the GLOHRI to Green Party Conference about three months before the Arab Spring kicked off. A queue formed to oppose it, arguing that it was not necessary &c.
Funny kinda business, politics.
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I supose it was inevitable that I'd disagree with you about something and I cant believe I'm sticking up for Gaddafi but compared to Blair his crimes are minimal and to some extent inevitable unless he bowed to the will of the western powers. For a wider insight I found this very informative http://lizziesliberation.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/the-lies-behind-the-wests-war-on-libya/
Hi John, disagreement is good. We learn more if discussion is constructive.
I had a look at the LizziesLiberation link.
It has good points - Gaddafi (MG) did good things for African telecomms, he worked against apartheid (though there is evidence that he works with Israel
http://bit.ly/lbFihv
http://bit.ly/i0Y5b7 ), he pressed for an African investment bank &c.
BUT. The piece does not mention MG's crimes - the secret police, the political arrests, and use of torture.
It quotes Rousseau: [he] maintains that civil wars, revolts and rebellions are the ingredients of the beginning of democracy.
Then the writer goes on to say:
"It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the Libyans revolted".
Er. Yes. He means revolted against the iniquitous military-industrial financial complex, to which we can all say amen. But the fact is that Libyans are also revolting against an oppressive regime, oppression to which the writer is blind.
It is this partial vision that I reject. My sympathies are with the people of the Arab Spring, and with anyone who rises up against oppressive regimes. I believe that torture, political imprisonment and all the other trappings of authoritarianism are unacceptable, and when people demonstrate against them and the Government picks them off with lethal fire, like a State version of Anders Behrens Breivik, a line has been crossed. The authorities are no longer a legitimate government, they are nothing but "State Terrorists".
I have been saying for years that frameworks should be put in place to isolate and weaken state terrorists as and when they appear, in an orderly and equitable way.
Unfortunately, when the regime uses force, the people are inevitably and regrettably driven to use force in return.
I believe that had the international community not intervened, there would have been a massacre in Benghazi.
There was humanitarian justification and motivation for the intervention. There is very probably a financial and oil motivation too. There always is.
NATO intervention is, like any military action, expensive, bloody, and difficult.
My contention has been that non-violent intervention, properly and speedily applied, would have brought the matter to a conclusion by now.
I am very concerned, as a Quaker and a Green, that I find myself supporting this war. But the logic of democracy and human rights leaves me no other option that I can see.
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